U.S. marshals raid Sheriff Joe's office

Judge orders seizure of records, hard drives in racial-profiling case

A judge on Friday ordered the seizure of identification documents and computer hard drives from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office, and chastised his attorneys for failing to turn over the evidence, requested months ago in a racial-profiling case against the Arizona lawman.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow ordered the seizure after a court-ordered monitor reported the sheriff’s office failed to hand over more than 1,400 identification documents – driver’s licenses, passports and identification cards – as part of a misconduct investigation involving the sheriff’s office.

Snow also ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to seize 50 hard drives from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Arpaio’s top aides spoke to the media Friday after the transfer of evidence had taken place, saying there was absolutely no raid, and that attorneys knew about the last-minute order from the judge to turn over the hard drives and IDs, according to the Associated Press.

Arpaio’s immigration smuggling squad and other deputies are accused of regularly pocketing items from people during traffic stops and busts of safe houses used during illegal-immigrant smuggling.

Court monitors claim the IDs belonged primarily to people of Hispanic descent.

Robert Warshaw, the official monitoring the sheriff’s office for the judge, claims the documents were slated for destruction. Warshaw also contends the sheriff’s office ordered employees not to voluntarily reveal the existence of the records, reported the AP.

Arpaio’s attorney John Masterson said the court had no evidence the IDs were handled improperly.

The hard drives are reportedly under scrutiny by the judge because of their possible connection to a Seattle computer programmer named Dennis Montgomery.

Montgomery became involved in the case after Snow’s wife was reportedly overheard making prejudicial statements about the sheriff during the 2012 election.

However, Arpaio’s office contends the investigator was not brought in to investigate Snow’s wife, but rather to prove the federal government was colluding against Arpaio by pressing a separate civil-rights lawsuit against him for racial profiling.

As WND reported, Arpaio has pressed for the judge to allow Montgomery to participate in the legal dispute, and in a recent filing suggests, strongly, that the judge is pursuing his own interests by delaying a decision on the motion to allow the investigator to intervene.

“The delay in this lawsuit is creating much more than the appearance that this court is working in concert with the American Civil Liberties Union in order to harm defendant Sheriff Joe Arpaio and intervenor Dennis Montgomery, as well as make good on its commitment, expressed by the court’s wife as confirmed by neutral persons, to ‘destroy’ Sheriff Joseph Arpaio so the sheriff cannot be reelected in 2016.”

The verbal barrage comes from attorney Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, who pointed out the rancor is so bad in the case that his client Montgomery, who had provided information at one point to Arpaio and was drawn into the current dispute that way, has filed a suit against the ACLU over their statements against him in the case.

“This case represents a multifaceted and growing conflict of interest not only by the ACLU and its attorneys but as important the equally unethical conduct by the court which must cease immediately,” the motion notes.

It seeks to avoid “irreversible harm” from Obama’s actions because they will “encourage[e] more illegal aliens to enter the country unlawfully.”

Arpaio, who has been consistently at odds with the Obama administration, released a statement at the time: “I am not seeking to myself enforce the immigration laws as this is the province of the federal government. Rather, I am seeking to have the president and the other defendants obey the U.S. Constitution, which prevents this executive order from having been issued in the first place. This unconstitutional act must be enjoined by a court of law on behalf of not just myself, but all of the American people.”